You’ve Got Grave Issues
You’ve Got Grave Issues was a Self-Published Title Pick from the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (June 2017)
You’ve Got Grave Issues is a collection of short, often humorous stories about a cemetery. These twenty tales portray people who came to regard the cemetery as a wonderful place to work; as home; as a source of inspiration; as a way to earn an honest--or dishonest--paycheck; and as a stage, upon which dramas left unfinished in life can finally unfold.
Among the characters we find a principled journalist who finds freedom begging at the cemetery gates; an accomplished scientist whose true calling is service to God; an enterprising fortune-teller who uses gravestones in her rituals for the matrimonially inclined; a devoted daughter who continues an ongoing dialogue with her departed mother; and more.
Nilufar Sharipova, author of You’ve Got Grave Issues, was born in a country that’s no longer on the map—the Soviet Union—into a family of journalists and cemetery workers. In 2016, her fiction was short-listed for the Literature prize from the Open Eurasian Literature Festival and Book Forum.
Read a story from the collection, available at Spurl Editions. Here are another three from the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative website.
Praise from the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative:
Sharipova’s command of short fiction shines through all eighteen stories in You’ve Got Grave Issues. Her textbook build-up mirrors the first minute of a roller-coaster. Then, Sharipova swiftly gives readers wild twists with a satisfying, laugh-out-loud end. Of course, Anne O. Fisher’s excellent translation lets English-speaking readers temporarily believe they belong to the culture of the municipality. After all, we are all complicit in the grave. Finally, Rusudan Kipiani’s illustrations add a stirring, other-worldly dimension to the gravely comical tales.
You’ve Got Grave Issues reminds readers of our own sense of control. Yet riding a roller-coaster means giving in to the moment. What’s left is kismet, joy, and maybe, if you’re lucky, a coffin full of ‘Pocklava.’